January 2012
3 posts
Little things
It’s the tiniest features that make a product shine in my eyes.
I recently discovered that a brand new Macbook Air can use the same charger as a six year old, first generation vanilla Macbook. This is something that you’ll never see in a feature list or promotional video, but it sure put a smile on my face the first time I discovered that.
A lot of my favorite things have become...
December 2011
2 posts
Space
Russia’s Vostok space program was responsible for several ‘firsts’ for Russia; the first manned flight, space walk, and the first human to die in space. Each flight seems to have an interesting story;
Aleksei Leonov, the first astronaut to conduct a space walk:
Though Leonov was able to complete his spacewalk successfully, both that task and the
overall mission were...
“The key thing to remember is that users don’t care about Ajax. They...”
– Asynchronous UIs - the future of web user interfaces
March 2010
1 post
Coal
There’s a great article over at grist on the state of coal energy.
40% of the world’s energy is generated by coal, even though the advances in alternative energy are rapidly reducing the economic benefits.
A group of activists are trying to get the US to switch away from coal power generation by 2030, and it looks like their efforts are producing results. Serial investor Warren...
February 2010
3 posts
1 tag
Prefab housing for Haiti
A number of companies are starting to come out with innovative new solutions to help rebuild devastated regions of the world. Andres Duany’s attempt is wind and earthquake resistant, quick and easy to build, light, and cheap. Plans are in place to set up a factory in Haiti in the coming weeks
(via jetsongreen.com)
The Bloom Box: a power plant for the home →
A new stackable, personal fuel cell with a promised payback of under 10 years. Could be big if the product lives up to their claims.
Earlier today Macmillan announced DynamicBooks, their newest push into online publishing. As usual there’s a ton of PR surrounding the announcement, but there are two things that stand out for me:
Prices for textbooks will drop to around $50 in an effort to stem the drop in profits caused by used textbook stores and online piracy. This move is long overdue, in my opinion. While...
January 2010
4 posts
“Never underestimate the bandwidth of a pickup truck full of magtapes.”
– rederikus
Watchsomnambulant:
Basejump video shot with an Immersive Media cam (ie. Google Street View style)
September 2008
2 posts
A song made entirely out of windows chimes →
apologies if this is older then the internet, but I love the transparency of the whole thing - you can see the composer piece the song together as he imagines it. yes, i know it’s cut together, but you still get a great sense of the creative process
June 2008
2 posts
How to bring an illegal weapon to the battlefield:
“We no longer accept the term thermobaric [for the AGM-114N] as there is no internationally agreed definition,” said an MoD spokesman. “We call it an enhanced blast weapon.”
The redefinition has allowed British forces to use the weapons legally, but is undermined by the publicity of their manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, which markets them as thermobaric.”
Link
TechCrunch Lite: All the articles, minus Steve... →
Removes great posts like this one:
Who controls TinyURL (or Snurl or other URL shortener) controls the high ground in the battle for the Internet platform. Here’s why: Our brains are wired to protect ourselves from threats to our food, oxygen, and water sources. Most attacks on our supply chains come from those closest to us, our families, friends, business associates, and combinations of...
May 2008
2 posts
"Ventriloquist dummyWON'T SHUT UP & has KILLED all... →
“the way i see it is, nothing happens after we die
so if i end up in hell,...”
– Jack
April 2008
22 posts
Robert Kramph is the high school science teacher I wish we all had. Every week he puts out an incredibly professional and entertaining science experiment.
There’s a hint of Gary Veynerchuck in this man
When a shaving model cuts his face, I bet its the same kind of awkward moment as after a premature ejaculation when shooting a porno.
“Did he just… aww, hell! That’s $5000 down the drain Billy!”
Twitter monetary idea #1
Twitter’s starting to really shine as a flexible data backend for a number of so-called barnacle applications. The service gives developers the ability to add tremendously powerful data inputs instantly; it takes care of nearly every possible option - SMS/IM/Email/Web forms - and can be monitored through a powerful API.
If I were twitter I might consider offering ‘pro’ versions...
Hicksdesign reskins Google reader →
Google reader is one of my essential sites, but the cluttered design has always annoyed me. Clearly Jason Hicks feels the same way, because he released an incredible skin that truly demonstrates the power of CSS.
This is an oldie, but I wish I’d found out about it before.
I’m not typically impressed by promotional posters, but the images used on the cover of the user’s manual for Cross pens (yes, you need instructions to use a pen now) have such a perfect attitude:
They’ve covered every base here - the modern day woman, the broody traveller, the suave young businessman. They’ve even got some great little touches; the phone number on the...
On change
I’ve been reading the daily webcomic Sinfest for a little over four years; it’s one of my daily destinations, after digg and google reader.
It’s no surprise that the artist’s style has changed after 8 years of drawing these cartoons 7 days a week. Scanning over them, you can really track certain points in the Tat’s life; months where he’s going through a...
“Freedom of speech doesn’t protect speech that you like, freedom of speech...”
– Ron Jeremy
Dragonball, the movie? →
Turns out they’re making a live-action dragonball movie. I never saw the original series as a kid, but this just strikes me as a bad idea
“When you prove yourself wrong, that’s progress”
– Neil Turok, explaining the process involved in developing his new model of the big bang
So today we get naked
Today was the third annual CSS naked day and I totally forgot about it. I’m not really sure what point it serves, but it just seemed like such a strange idea that I had to do it.
Edit: So it seems like tumblr’s HTML holds up really well to the nakedness. To be honest, I think I almost like the simplicity of this design over the actual.. dressed version
Some changes
Just finished setting up a custom domain, so the site is not hosted at http://thatcanadian.com. While I was at it I set up a feedburner RSS stream, so you may have to update your RSS feeds to read this properly. I’m also hard at work on a funky little custom design. I don’t want to give away too much, but I will reveal that it’s built to make my purchase of 24” monitor feel...
Storycode
Just came across storycode after having seen their Dragon’s Den pitch
First off - it’s a terrible pitch, and based on a useless model (who wants to answer 40 questions with no real motivation?) That said, the company’s integration with Foyle’s hints at something big; most electronic stores don’t offer any kind of recommendation system simply because it’s...
Are you a Windows user?
jakoblodwick:
It seems like most Tumblr users are Mac people. But there must be some PC/Windows Tumblrs out there. If you are a Windows user, can you explain why in a reblog?
In then end I’m using the OS to do something else. The best operating system on the planet wouldn’t be noticeable; it just stays out of the way and lets you do what you need to do.
I use all three OS...
“Aren’t You the Guys Who Killed the Electric Car?”
– Chevrolet’s new energy conservation mini-site tackles the controversy behind the highly-publicized removal of its EV1 concept car directly. While you may see things differently then what the site discusses, it’s a great example of how not hiding the issues in pseudo-speak can sometimes...
March 2008
13 posts
“The ultimate goal is to do a better job than the couple at the last dinner party...”
– How to host a dinner people (for white people)
The age of virtual pizza parties →
Sphere operates a ‘virtual company’. They don’t have physical offices, and all their workers are located in different cities around the world.
Being entirely virtual can open gaps in communication (yes, even in this day and age), so the company recently tried something different - it had a virtual pizza party.
It’s interesting that a company can operate properly and...
Be unique →
Soulwax has a really unique design. I say unique because I personally think it’s hideous, but I love the fact that they did something different. It’s all too easy to embrace CSS and godzilla-sized footers; you get criticized less, but forgotten quicker.
Sometimes you just need a good frame-based design to kick some sense back into your body.
Why Vista Basic should be Microsoft's next big...
It’s hard to believe, but the computer market was a much different place back when Vista was released. The cheap sub-notebook market had yet to be defined, and UMPCs were just being rolled out (to critical disdain). It was a world of power, with visions of mythical dual-core machines in every suburban home.
A year later and the whole market’s changed; the EEE PC is selling like...
Advanced brake lights
A team of students at Virginia tech are working on brake lights that tell drivers behind you if your car is slowing down or how hard you’re breaking.
The thing that interests me the most about the system is that it had to be designed so that people who have never seen it before will be able to understand it within a matter of seconds. The team seems to have approached it really...
Six degrees of wikipedia
Here’s a fun idea for a game
Pick a topic you want to arrive at (I chose Atoms)
Click on wikipedia’s random link
Attempt to arrive at your desired topic through the related links alone
I was able to do this on my first try.
Tiny Russian province -> Russia -> healthcare -> chemistry -> atoms
Bonus points if you manage to do it in less then six jumps
Building on that Economist article i was just talking about.
Email by itself is not a good money making service. Social networks by themselves are not good money making services. IM tools like Meebo aren’t good money making services. But combine the data they can gather on users and you can get a stunningly accurate picture of an individual, and that’s worth something.
The future of social networking
The economist thinks that social networks are a fad that will never see the massive revenues enjoyed by Google and the like. They talk about the problems with social networks, and what the future holds for social interaction online. From the article:
“E-mail in the wider sense is the most important social network,” says David Ascher, who manages Thunderbird, a cutting-edge open-source e-mail...
